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About Brand New

Brand New is a division of UnderConsideration, and it happens to be our most popular division of all the divisions. Its sole purpose is to chronicle and provide opinions on corporate and brand identity work, focusing mostly on identity design and a modest amount of packaging. We cover redesigns and new designs. Nothing more, nothing less, what you see is what you get.

Brand New has been published since October of 2006 when it was spun-off from the now unpublished Speak Up. In the glory days of Speak Up some of our most ardent discussions happened around redesigns of logos but that same passion that ignited those threads was a turn off for some readers who claimed they were simply bitch-fests. As a patch, we decided to move those logo bitch-fests to their own site so that we could all bitch merrily about logos. This focused energy turned out to be quite an attraction and Brand New has become a very active reflection of the world of corporate and brand identity. And, while we do all bitch quite a bit, the opinions presented throughout amount to something of real value for those in the field.

As long as corporations, non-profit organizations and consumer products keep changing or are being introduced into the market we will be here, providing our opinions one post at a time. We hope you enjoy it.

Selection Criteria

Replying
First things first: We have found it impossible to reply to every single e-mail that comes in. We never expected to get up to 15 or 20 e-mails a day just for Brand New. Which is undeniably great, because those e-mails become the main source of our content. But let’s all agree that unless you are asking a specific question or have some concerns or feedback we will not be able to reply to all tips sent in. Consider this paragraph our eternal reply button extending our gratitude.

Tips
Keep them coming at brandnew [@] underconsideration [.] com. We receive everything from “I was driving down the road and saw a new logo on this building” to fully researched e-mails. They are all welcome. You send them in, we will do the hard work.

Mainstream
Okay, so on to some criteria. One of the first things we try to look at is if the product, service or corporation is relevant to a large number of people. Is it well known? Does it have history? Why should we care? If it’s a well known brand, chances are we will put it up.

Not so mainstream
For every major brand, there are a handful of lesser known identities that we have posted. Whether they are corporations that we may have never heard of but that have 10,000 employees worldwide or whether it’s product only sold regionally, we will review it if it’s an interesting story and there is something to learn from it.

Not mainstream at all
If we have never ever heard of the corporation, product or service and further Google-ing reveals that it is small or very local, we will not post it. There is nothing wrong with that kind of work and we do it ourselves all the time, but as far as Brand New content, it doesn’t work. It has to be a very compelling design story for us to post something very small.

International
Most of the identities we review are American. That’s because, the majority of our readers are in the U.S., but we have an increasingly international audience and we really enjoy posting work from around the world. If you are tipping us from afar, please let us know what kind of relevance any given identity would have in your motherland, so that we can have a better understanding of it.

Timeliness
We have broken this rule a few times, but anything that is more than three or six months old will not be posted.

Packaging
This year, we have already shown more packaging than last year. There is no plan to turn into a packaging-heavy web site, we do want to keep it focused on the identity aspect. But there are some products that are so defined by their label and packaging, beyond just their logo, that it’s very interesting for discussion. So we will post packaging somewhat selectively and not every box of crackers that redesigns will be posted.

General discussions
Every now and then we get e-mails with suggestions of broader discussions about logo and identity topics. Nothing wrong with those, but Brand New is not the place for them. It’s either a Before/After post or New or an In Brief.

Summing up
The identities we review most be interesting and relevant, something that we care to see discussed whether it’s because we are familiar with the brand or because we are interested in the visual result. There is no real formula for selecting and, at the end of the day, it all comes down to our whims.